Ammie Pascua: Origami Artist and Gardener

“She has moved with me, through everywhere that I have been... she has been through relationships with me, through pets dying, she’s been there. So yeah, it’s a relationship.”

Ammie Pasqua is talking about Agatha, her cherished aloe plant.

“She was maybe six inches tall when I got her. She’s a big girl now. She’s like a great, great, great grandmother.”

Ammie folds origami cranes while she talks with us about her plants, "It’s having another companion you can take care of. Like anything, you have to put a little bit of care into it, and you’ll get a lot out of it."

Her garden is full of friends, especially in the springtime. In the winter, though, things get a little lonely, which is why she turned to folding origami. The paper provides color during seasons that are gray.

“I started folding origami as a kind of meditation practice. It was also about control for me,” she tells us. Ammie suffers from depression and anxiety. Her exercises of folding origami and gardening were methods for her to cope. “It’s a way for me to control one thing in my life.”

When a garden is wild, it seems to be a reflection of the inward state of her mind. She begins to weed, begins to rearrange, begins to plant something new, and it affects her mind and her soul. Working in the garden organizes her thoughts.

“Smells also work for me,” she tells us, referring to her mental health. "Lemon verbena in particular is a wonderful scent to wake up to in the morning." Her method of “self medication” is actually pretty cheap, she says. Plants are worth every penny.

“You need green time, I think, anyway you can get it… It makes you happy. When they are thriving, a little part of you is thriving too.”